We appreciate the enormous support that our ABestWeb community has experienced over the many years it has served its members and sponsors. We have decided to exit this business and have placed the property up for sale and we are actively entertaining interest.

In the meantime, community members will be able to read but not post to ABestWeb beginning on Jan. 18.

We want to thank you for your numerous contributions and your ongoing support. If you have any questions, please let us know.

Yeah, our Governor cut a deal and slipped in the Amazon Tax into his budget last night. Dirty politics.

If you're a CT affiliate and stand to lose one penny from the Amazon Tax Bill...now more then ever we need you to get involved. Please join the PMA's Google Group at: http://groups.google.com/group/pma-ct

Is this estimate based upon the assumption that all or most online retailers will collect sales tax?

Or does this estimate reflect the exclusion or Amazon, Overstock, and many other retailers who will terminate their advertising relationships with in-state publishers, to completely avoid the law's impact?

I'm looking at the page you referenced, and it actually says "Amazon Tax." It doesn't say "Advertising Nexus" or "Affiliate." If this is a document coming out of the legislature, it's very damning evidence.

Remember, it's generally illegal (unconstitutional, I think) to pass a law to impose special duties on a specific "person" (though certainly it's okay to pass a broad law that applies to all "persons" in a specific situation, even if there is currently only one "person" impacted by the law).

They can't pass a law that says, "Amazon must..." but they could pass a law that says "Any out-of-state retailer receiving more than $XXX million in revenue from state residents, must...." And generally, legislators and their staffs KNOW not to ever spell out their specific intent to target a single person or company. (We all know what's going on here, it's the booksellers' lobbyists trying to punish Amazon, specifically.)

Now Amazon might go to court to have the law ruled invalid because it's clearly targeted at Amazon specifically (in addition to the other constitutional arguments that would likely prevail before the US Supreme Court, though the issue will likely be moot before then). Other merchants might also argue that despite the wording of the law, they shouldn't be impacted because it's clear that the intent was that the law should apply only to Amazon.

Would etailers win in court, on this particular theory? Probably not, but if this document did come from the legislature, it's definitely a mistake.